She is now playing the role of Florence Foster Jenkins, an American socialite and opera singer who achieved notoriety for her enthusiastic but less-than-perfect performances.

Speaking at a Telegraph Bespoke event about the film, Streep disclosed how she had taken influence from her own family in bringing the character to life.

“I love singing but I'm like a B+ singer,” she said. “I realised that when I started to listen to great singers and their level of artistry, but that doesn't stop me from singing.

Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant share a joke on the red carpet at the Florence Foster Jenkins premiereCredit:
Rex Features

“My children stopped me from singing around the house. They are so cruel, really.

"It's so humbling and such a good thing if you're a big movie star to have children."

Streep, who trained as an opera singer as a teenager, has four children with her second husband Don Gummer, with her eldest daughter Mamie following in her footsteps to become an acclaimed actress.

When asked how she had found empathy with her latest character, she said she saw the same naïve enthusiasm in Florence Foster Jenkins as she had in her children’s attempts at putting together their own plays.

"When she was ten she was extremely bossy - I don't know where she gets it.

"She would organise her sisters and the neighbourhood children into plays. The neighbourhood children would play little animals usually and she would be the queen and her sisters would be ladies in waiting.

"Sometimes there was a murder of one of her sisters.

"These plays were extremely serious. There were only two rules: you couldn't laugh, and you couldn't leave. And they were very long.

"The belief and the zeal and the passion, there was something in that that I thought ‘oh that's Florence’.

"There was an element of belief that we lose after we're children.”

She added: "We all do this, we play act with great passion and belief and then that gets sort of covered.

"That openness and real delight in her is something I was so drawn to.

"I imagined that was loveable and I could see why he [her on-screen husband] loved her."